The Nation: Tuning Out -- The TV Watch; What We Missed in Boston

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: August 1, 2004

PEOPLE, particularly network anchors, complain that conventions are too tailored to television. Actually, they are not tailored enough. If the parties really wanted the networks to give them gavel-to-gavel coverage, they would cut the event down to one night, not select a nominee in advance, and let viewers call in and, as they do on the Fox Network hit, vote for their favorite speaker -- Convention Idol.

That would get Dan Rather's folksy idioms flowing.

Instead, Republicans and Democrats plod on with their creaky tradition, dragging out a foregone conclusion over four days, flattering state delegates, wining and dining donors, and letting obscure elected officials, even the nutty ones, have their say at the podium. Political analysts disparage the display as a political ''infomercial,'' but to the credit of the organizers, they are not catering to the network audience nearly as much as they could.

So, are Americans getting the convention coverage they deserve? Or are the television networks shirking the civic responsibility that was implicit when the government gave them the airwaves and let them rake in billions off a public trust?

One thing is inarguable: Even though each of the three networks devoted only three hours to the entire event, coverage of political conventions has never been more varied and plentiful. Viewers could hear every speech, count every delegate vote and see every Democratic bigwig and media diva by switching among PBS, C-Span, three 24-hour cable news networks, and, for the first time this week, ABC's fledgling digital cable news network, ''ABC News Now.'' Peter Jennings, who has turned into the Captain Ahab of the network anchors, relentlessly pushed the ABC news division to deliver gavel-to-gavel coverage to an almost empty house. (Within the universe of broadcast and cable, even digital cable, the little niche of ''ABC News Now'' little niche is a microdot.)

What was missing last week, however, was the unassailable authority that a network anchor brings to convention coverage. Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Rather complained that they could not argue to their corporate bosses for more time when so few scoops were to be had. But particularly when there is no real news, viewers benefit from following a trusted observer who can weave together disparate strands -- a rogue faction in the Colorado delegation, a candidate's use of imagery and props, the leitmotifs of even the duller speeches -- and bring to life an important political moment. Instead, Tom Brokaw and Mr. Rather took this convention pass/fail, interviewing a few headliners in the sky boxes, kibitzing with their colleagues and house experts, but never engaging fully in the drama beneath them.

Political conventions are like 19th-century novels; they benefit from an omniscient narrator.

Instead, viewers got the television equivalent of the modern paperback -- from the Nicholson Baker-novel obsessiveness of ''ABC News Now'' to the fluffy, self-absorbed novellas of anchors interviewing each other on MSNBC and Fox News. The enlightened viewer could design do-it-yourself reportage -- a little C-Span and PBS, some CNN and an hour on a network on prime time. (Most Americans chose to tune out completely.) Television is a passive medium. It would have been nice to have the option of letting a trusted network anchor make those choices.

That is one reason why the comedian Jon Stewart was so popular a compass to convention coverage. ''The Daily Show,'' his program on Comedy Central, did not just mock the politicians -- easy targets well flayed by Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, et al. Mr. Stewart also zeroed in on the television journalists who chose to snub the convention as they covered it. Mr. Stewart lampooned those who deplored the slick, synthetic packaging of events, then grew indignant when Al Sharpton diverged from the script. (''I think it is an insult to African-American voters that they are giving this guy as much time as they have,'' groused Howard Fineman, a Newsweek columnist who as a panelist on MSNBC, alongside Chris Matthews, was on the air more than most speakers.)

And ''The Daily Show'' exposed the inexperience of NBC's next evening news anchor, Brian Williams, who crashed his way through the crowd to buttonhole Mr. Sharpton right after his electrifying speech and then could not think of a question. Mr. Stewart showed a tape of a slightly disheveled Mr. Williams telling Mr. Sharpton that he had been watching the teleprompter ''while you did a riff on whatever you did a riff on.''

Some of the most memorable moments on television had almost nothing to do with the convention itself, notably Michael Moore on Fox News badgering Bill O'Reilly into submissive silence by asking if he would send his own child to Iraq. Yet there were interesting speeches by nonfamous politicians. Even the cable news networks studiously avoided showing them, preferring to interview politicians and other journalists in the pristine sanctity of sky boxes and makeshift outdoor sets --as if trying to demarcate a cordon sanitaire between the convention and those who cover it.

But the sanctimony of network news executives who complain of feeling used by the parties rings hollow. Their standard for what constitutes news is, to say the least, pliable: NBC's convention coverage included Ben Affleck in Fenway Park pitching baseballs to Katie Couric on ''Today.''

Instead of scorning the event, the networks would do better by working with convention planners more closely. Both have plenty to gain: Political parties and broadcast networks alike are steadily losing market share (the first to independent voters or simply nonvoters, the second to cable and DVD's).

Ratings for cable news and PBS increased over the convention. If the broadcast networks had provided more coverage and given a sleeker presentation, millions more viewers might have been tempted to tune in. Conventions will never get huge ratings or make the networks money, but they only come once every four years.

NBC has proved ingenious at luring viewers who don't like sports to watch the Olympics by milking each athlete's résumé for Hallmark moments; it could stir up similar mini-dramas around elected officials. An NBC promotional spot highlighting the Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin starts this way: ''A lifetime spent alone under water.'' The story of Dennis Kucinich could be packaged much the same way, though perhaps more succinctly: ''A lifetime spent alone.''

For now, Mr. Jennings says ABC's ''mini-me'' digital channel coverage is at least a consolation. When Mr. O'Reilly of Fox News asked him, ''So you're not offended by this contrived display?'' Mr. Jennings replied: ''I don't see any point in being offended by it. We are here. It is an opportunity. They do what they do. We do what we do. And it'll be exactly the same for the Republican Party.''